Are your beauty products helping you or poisoning you?

Admit it, we have all spent an obscene amount of money at one point or another on the eye cream, moisturizer, face masks, etc. making promises of beautiful skin, hair, nails, and so on.

In all honesty, what will have the greatest “beautifying” effect is a good diet, sleep, and staying out of the sun. However, the question remains, do any of these products deliver on their promises?

The answer is yes to both. When it comes to hygiene and beauty there are definitely good, useless,  and bad categories. Which of course leads us to the next obvious question of how do you know which is which.

This is simple – the ingredients. Why would that matter if I’m not eating it you might wonder? Our skin is what’s called “transdermal”. This is a fancy term for saying the majority of what we put on our body gets absorbed into our body.

So, just like a food label, we also need to read the ingredients on the labels of our beauty and hygiene products. Many of them can contribute to a host of harmful effects like disrupting our endocrine system (hormone balance) thereby damaging our metabolism. They are often carcinogenic, which causes or contributes to tumor growth. They might even have neurotoxic effects, which can alter our brain function or kill neuronal cells. And all you wanted was to remove some dark circles right? Scary stuff, I know.

Conversely, there are totally clean beauty products that can help you moisturize, cleanse, exfoliate etc. and here is how you will tell the difference between what works and what’s flat out dangerous.

The following list of ingredients are the top offenders in your beauty products. If you see these listed put the product back on the shelf.

1. Parabens - methylparaben, propylparaben, benzylparaben, butylparabens, and pthalates.
2. Petrolem - petrolatum, mineral oils and baby oils.
3. Perfume / parfum / fragrance.
4. Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLS), Sodium Dedocyl Sulfate (SDS), and Sodium Lauryl Ether Sulfate (SLES).
5. Formaldehyde-emitting agents, such as phenoxyethanol and DMDM allantoin.
6. Triclosan and benzalkonium chloride.

Believe me, I could go on and on about all the dangers of each ingredient listed above, but it would just be more of the same – obesity, cancer, endocrine disruption, etc. Trust me, I’ve done my homework. Avoid them as often as possible.

Now, in all my books, blogs, favorite things on my website, etc. I have listed my favorite products throughout the years that are void of any of these chemicals, but the general rule of thumb is to look for simple products, with ingredients you can pronounce and are readily familiar with, and the best catch all is the USDA organic seal. For a list of some of my favorite beauty and hygiene products check out my Amazon page.